Wednesday, February 22, 2017

The Falcon

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For almost the entire human saga, our ancestors were
hunter-gathers.For most of us, these
kinfolk are long forgotten in family memory.Quite a bit has been written about wild societies by visiting outsiders
from civilization, strangers who could not fully understand the cultures of
their subjects.The Falcon is the
autobiography of John Tanner, a fascinating book that gives readers a ringside
seat at a wild society, prior to conquest, from the viewpoint of an insider.

Tanner was a white lad born about 1780, in frontier Kentucky,
not far from Cincinnati, Ohio.At the
age of 9, he was captured by the Shawnee and taken to Saginaw, Michigan, where
he was treated harshly for two years.Then,
up at Mackinaw, an Ottawa woman, who had lost her son, bought him for 20
gallons of whiskey, blankets, tobacco, and other treasures.He was given a name that meant “the falcon.”

Tanner was a rough, tough, honest man who endured an
incredibly difficult life.He lived
among the Ottawa and Ojibwa people from roughly 1790 to 1820, and spent this
period hunting, trapping, fishing, and defending himself from a variety of
angry and violent folks.He traveled
thousands of miles by foot, canoe, and horseback through a vast
wilderness.His saga mentions visits to Sault
Ste. Marie, Michigan; Pembina, North Dakota; Lake of the Woods, Ontario; and
Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba.

This story takes place in an era of bloody helter-skelter, when
the traditional way of life was seriously assaulted, and beginning to
disintegrate.Disease ridden, pale faced
terrorists had landed on the east coast, and their infectious pathogens spread
to distant regions of the interior, killing enormous numbers of natives.Terrorists were beginning to settle on the
frontier.Tanner’s parents had moved
west from Virginia, stupidly planning to acquire prime real estate in an
extremely dangerous wilderness.

In that era, many New England tribes had become heavily dependent
on agriculture.Corn produced far more
food per acre than forest, leading to increased population density and conflict.Diana Muir described how corn quickly
depleted the soil, requiring ongoing deforestation to clear new fields.When the devastating epidemics arrived,
tribes had been on an unsustainable trajectory to run out of forest that was suitable
for cropland.Corn helped the Iroquois
become a dominant power, and their aggressive expansion forced other Algonquin
tribes to flee westward.

At the same time, the fur trade was a booming, and there was
intense competition for pelts.Many traders
were lying, cheating, racist creeps.Industrial scale trapping drove the beavers close to extinction in
eastern regions, so traders and trappers had to keep moving westward.

As eastern tribes were forced westward by warfare, settlers,
and the quest for pelts, they put growing pressure on the fierce Sioux tribes
of the prairies, who were not amused.Tanner spent a lot of time in hot zones close to Sioux country, where he
was in constant danger of losing his scalp.

The Sioux hated Tanner and his tribe for trespassing.Because Tanner was the offspring of terrorists,
many of his Indian companions and family were wary of him — terrorists were
often whirlwinds of evil spirits.Several times, they tried to kill him.Finally, the terrorists hated him because he looked like a savage,
thought like a savage, and spoke a savage tongue.He once made an effort to return to his
kinfolk in Christian society, but he didn’t belong in that bizarre world, and kept
catching fevers.

Indians were tolerant of gender-benders.On a visit to Leech Lake, Minnesota, Tanner
met the son of a chief who was an A-go-kwa — “one of those who make themselves
women, and are called women by the Indians.There are several of this sort among most, if not all the Indian
tribes.”The A-go-kwa was about 50-years
old, and had lived with many husbands.

The central theme of the book is the endless struggle to
survive.Starvation was a primary
threat, and getting food was job #1.Mike
Culpepper wrote an essay on Tanner’s life, including a description of his
diet:“Tanner hunts bear, buffalo,
moose, but also eats muskrat, rabbit, beaver, porcupine, otter and other
animals trapped for their fur, and, when game is not available, his dogs,
horses, and scraps of leather.He eats
ducks, geese, blackbirds, and swan.He
fishes for sturgeon, dory, and unnamed small fish that are eaten by the handful.He consumes corn, wild rice, and berries.”Yum!

Throughout the book, Tanner and those around him suffer from infections
and fevers.He lived in an era where
diseases were common and largely incurable, for both wild folks and the
civilized.Howard Simpson described the
situation after 1812, as settlement of the Midwest began:“The most lethal dangers the pioneers had to
face were neither savages nor wild animals.They were typhoid, malaria, dysentery, malignant scarlet fever,
pneumonia, erysipelas in epidemic form, spotted fever, or what would now be
called meningococcal meningitis, and diphtheria.”

Homo
sapiens is a bipedal species — we move on two legs, not four.This evolutionary trait enabled long distance
running, chasing game until they collapsed from exhaustion, a practice often
mentioned in discussions of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. Tanner also mentioned this.“There are among the Indians some, but not
many, men who can run down an elk on the smooth prairie, when there is neither
snow nor ice.The moose and the buffalo
surpass the elk in fleetness, and can rarely be taken by fair running by a man
on foot.”

Tanner, armed with a low tech, single shot musket, killed
lots of animals.One winter, he was
hired by a fur company to provide meat for Scottish settlers.In four months, he killed about 100
buffalo.Another winter, he hunted with
a buddy.“O-ke-mah-we-ninne, as he was
called, killed nineteen moose, one beaver, and one bear.I killed seventeen moose, one hundred
beavers, and seven bears, but he was considered the better hunter, moose being
the most difficult of all animals to kill.”

Nomadic people found some trade goods useful: muskets, ammo,
gunpowder, knives, axes, pots, blankets, corn, etc.They gained no prestige by hoarding valuable trade
goods, because it was dumb.The stuff
they owned had to be hauled along, every time they moved to a new camp.So, one pot was enough.Consequently, they trapped just enough to
secure the necessities, and no more.Traders learned a toxic secret — offering booze seriously motivated the
trappers to produce far more pelts.

Oblivion drinking is a regular celebration in this saga.After a long, harsh winter of trapping, pelts
would be taken to the trading post.Necessities would be acquired, and the leftover income would be invested
in 10 gallon (38 l) kegs of booze.Over
the course of the book, at least 100 gallons of rum and whiskey were
guzzled.Multi-day drunks often resulted
in impolite comments, bloody fights, and murders.Their lives were harsh, and a lovely drunk
provided a vacation from the daily routine, a spirit journey.Booze destroyed many lives.

In Tanner’s day, in roadless woodlands, dogs were their
beasts of burden.On the wide-open
prairie, there was a new beast of burden, the horse.The Spanish had brought horses to America,
and some escaped.They rapidly grew in
numbers.By 1700 or 1750, plains Indians
had horses — lots of horses.Horses
greatly increased their ability to hunt, feed more people, and zoom across the plains
at superhuman velocity.

Each horse was the private property of an individual.Only fools hoarded 100 iron pots, but owning
100 horses provided immense social status.Horses fed themselves, moved themselves to new camps, and hauled people
and stuff.Stealing them from neighbors
was an exciting way to demonstrate your bravery and get rich quick, or die
trying.Raiding was a popular
pastime.Naturally, it was a good way to
make enemies, and ignite long-term feuds.In the horse age, living in a remote location was no longer safe and
secure.

Tanner described the bloody side of raiding:“I had four horses, one of which was a very
fleet and beautiful one, being considered the best out of one hundred and
eighty which a war-party of Crees, Assinneboins, and Ojibbeways, had recently
brought from the Fall Indians.In this
excursion they had been absent seven months.They had fallen upon and destroyed one village, and taken one hundred
and fifty scalps, besides prisoners.”

Tanner spent most of his life in the Great White North, a
region known for long and extremely harsh winters.On chilly nights, they huddled around fires
inside drafty lodges.Tanner mentioned
several close calls with death.Once,
after breaking through the ice, “we were no sooner out of the water than our
moccasins and clothes were frozen so stiff that we could not travel.I began also to think that we must die.But I was not like my Indian brother, willing
to sit down and wait patiently for death to come.”

Homo
sapiens evolved on the warm tropical savannahs of Africa, where a
year round supply of organic food was generally available.They didn’t need clothing or shelter.Hypothermia was never a risk.Life was so much easier in an ecosystem for
which evolution had fine-tuned our bodies.Remember that. The status quo is
zooming toward sharp limits, and our soft lifestyles are a temporary
high-impact luxury.

Culpepper, Mike, John
Tanner Between Two Worlds.This
10-page essay fills in many helpful details missing in Tanner’s words, and
better describes the big picture dramas that affected his life.It discusses his controversial end.

Fierst, John T., Return
to Civilization, Minnesota
History, Minnesota Historical Society, 1986.This 15-page essay describes Tanner’s
troubled life in Sault Ste. Marie, in the years after his story had been
published.

Dr. Edwin James transcribed Tanner’s story, in 1828, at Sault
Ste. Marie.He edited out lots of
excessive details, to make the story more readable.The 1830 edition, published by Baldwin &
Craddock in London, includes an 18-page introduction by James (HERE).

Muir, Diana, Reflections
in Bullough’s Pond — Economy and Ecosystem in New England, University
Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire, 2000.Chapter one describes the ecological and
social turbulence generated by the adaptation of agriculture by the Native
Americans.

Simpson, Howard N., “The Impact of Disease on American
History,” The New England
Journal of Medicine CCL (1954):680.

2 comments:

Now it's like half of what I know of that time and place comes from your one article. Thank you!I believe that survival in the colder north, though, was not quite as hard then as you depicted (except for individuals camping out): in the winter the tribes and clans had longhouses and kept each other warm. For all I know, a lot of people sleeping in a teepee is pretty toasty too.

Greetings Sir Lundberg of Santa Cruz, California! I once spent a year in Berkeley, and a year in Arcata. The only place I’ve lived with a milder “winter” was Phoenix.

I spent nine years on the Keweenaw Peninsula on Lake Superior. In the winter of 1978-79, the region got 390 inches (10m) of snow. When I lived there, I experienced a winter with 360 inches. Few if any Indians spent the winter there in the old days. Snows began in September and melted in April. For most of the winter, the ground was covered with 48 inches of snow. Superior always freezes, sometimes entirely. It’s not a groovy place for winter hunting and fishing. I would have promptly died there if I had tried to survive with a musket and snowshoes.

The Red River region where Tanner spent a lot of time gets less snow, but the winters are just as long, and far more frigid. In that region there were no toasty “longhouses.” In that region, winter is serious business. I had a flashback about reading Knud Rasmussen’s book, The People of the Polar North. In my review I wrote:

“Rasmussen’s buddy, Peter Freuchen, took a nap during a storm when the temperature was -60° F (-51° C). When he awoke, his feet were frozen. This cost him a leg. Rasmussen told the story of Qumangâpik, who had four wives and 15 children. The first wife froze to death, the second was buried by an avalanche, the third died of illness, and the fourth froze to death. Of his 15 children, one starved, four were frozen, and five died of illness. Qumangâpik froze to death, with his wife and two little children. Three of his kids outlived him.”

You can download a free PDF of the book at the following link (click on the READ EBOOK button):HERE